Inna Shevchenko's visage, framed in blond hair and crowned with flowers, helped inspire France's latest postage stamp. The leading activist from the Ukrainian feminist movement, Femen, won political asylum in France within a year of her application. But the 23-year-old now risks up to five years in prison and a 75-thousand euro (103-thousand US-dollar) fine for bashing bells and allegedly damaging one, at Notre Dame Cathedral, one year ago. She and eight others had been celebrating, in their way, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI - dressed only in panty hose. All nine face charges they damaged one of the brand new bells on display. But their Wednesday hearing is expected to be postponed. Shevchenko remains defiant. "Of course you are scared to spend five years in jail because of your protest, of course you are scared, but this is not that fear that will make you stop your activity. We are scared to not be able to continue our activity and this is why I had to run away to continue," she said. Like an army general plotting how to encircle the enemy, Shevchenko mocks critics, and marches forward. The French are not shy about succumbing to seduction, but little did they know they were dealing with a soldier for the feminist cause, here to organise the ranks of women for a radical insurgency with bare breasts as weapons and perfectly toned bodies as shock troops. Shevchenko announced plans in an interview with The Associated Press to expand Femen's footprint from nine countries, most in Europe, to the United States, with a branch opening within months in New York or Washington D.C. "We are a bunch of angry women who choose their strategy, as a feminist strategy to take off their tops and to write on their bodies, that was for so long an objective fight. To transform their body in a political weapon, in a political poster to write everything we want them to know," she said. The goal is a "complete victory over patriarchy," according to Femen's Web site. "We are not a bunch of friends, we are not meeting because we like each other. We don't know each other. Many of our activists who are in Mexico or in Canada, I never saw them physically, I don't know them, I mean I don't know them personally. But what I know about them is that we are connected to the same idea and same strategy with sign and name of 'Femen', " Shevchenko said. A second trial of a single Femen activist is set for March 14, this time for simulating abortion in the famed Eglise (Church) de la Madeleine, like Notre Dame, a cultural reference for Parisians. Femen has orchestrated bare-breasted protests near the Vatican, in front of Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and in several places of worship, including at Christmas Mass at the Cologne Cathedral, where a single topless woman, with "I am God" painted on her chest, briefly jumped on the altar. Critics claim that Femen thrives on media attention more than improving the lot of womankind. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/5cf7b402834eb675bf6c27e790645b97 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

• published: 31 Jul 2015
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